Wet Chalkboard Writing and The Bean Bucket

Faithy is having fun this week writing some of her letters with a little wet sponge on the chalkboard. Just another fun way of practicing letter writing without actually sitting at the table and writing. :) She's enjoying it very much...and the chalkboard is now very clean! :)

Ha! Ha! I just realized as I am posting this that my kids are wearing their pajamas in over 1/2 of our 'school time' pictures! LOL! Yes, we wear our pj's most all the day if we don't have to go anywhere. Why not stay comfy? :) But really...I think it's because most of the time we get up so early and the kids are ready to get started that we just begin our day and don't often get the kids dressed until after we take a break and have a mid morning snack....or "2nd Breakfast" as my kids like to call it because they get up so stinking early! LOL! Thanks to those dreadful Army trumpets blaring so early every morning!

So the Bean Bucket... it's definitely a favorite in our house, but is only to be taken out when Samuel is napping.

He got up earlier than I thought he would this day and Faithy was still happily playing with it so I thought I'd sit there with him and show him how we play in the bean bucket.... It took all of 2 seconds for THIS to happen....

See the floor!? Faithy instantly started saying "I didn't do it!" But it was okay...part of playing in the bean bucket is using the tiny broom and dustpan afterwards to clean it up. Only usually, the mess is much smaller!

My sweet Faith Elaina didn't mind though and she helped Mama clean it all up! But I don't think we'll be letting Samuel around the bean bucket again for a long time. :)

What To Do With Samuel?

I have had SO many friends asking recently what to do with the littlest ones while they homeschool the bigger ones so that THIS doesn't happen while you have your back turned....

The backside of the hutch is a mirror that Samuel can see himself in thru the glass doors but only...when he's on the table. THIS is his new favorite thing to do. And of course once he saw me taking pictures BEFORE telling him to get down, he thought it was really fun and okay that he was up there.

SO HE DID IT SEVERAL MORE TIMES BEFORE THE DAY WAS OVER!

Anyway, if you don't want your little ones doing this during school time, the best trick in our house is to keep them busy doing their own things during school time. I save certain toys that only come out at school time and often fill a few baskets each morning or the night before that I set out for the little ones to do while I'm schooling the big kids that have activities for them to do in them. I've posted about several in the past under my Babies & Toddlers category but I'll add a few more here that we've been doing in the last couple of weeks. 

Several of these Samuel did in one day...

Long colorful straws and an empty bottle:

An ice cube tray and anything to put into the spaces...here he's using felt balls:

Pipe cleaners into anything with holes:

I found the idea for using a colander on pinterest.com. I stuck all the pipe cleaners in and thought he would enjoy pulling them all out...he did...and then he also wanted to stick them all back in when he was done! So it was extra entertaining and for a much longer period of time than I thought it would be! It's always nice when that happens. :)

Then of course Faithy, my preschooler wanted in on this and she did the same thing... pulling them all out and sticking them back in...

Then she wore it like a hat while she ran around like a crazy person!

Lids! I know I've told a lot of people about this one but I don't think I have any pictures up of this one yet. It's just a large container full of plastic lids of every color that we collected off of anything we could find before we threw it away. I was surprised at how many things we buy that have bright plastic lids!
The kids love to dump them, sort them, stack them and do all sorts of things. :)

Easter Eggs! Yes, even in September a carton of Easter Eggs is fun...you don't even have to fill them! Though that is fun to do sometimes too! :)

Well, that's a few ideas. I'll post more as I get pictures of them! It's kind of hard to remember to take pictures when these are the things I plan specifically for him to do while I do something else with the big kids! LOL! But I'll try! :)

'Not' Going Back To School Party!

Our homeschool co-op over here kicks off the new school year with a 'Not' Going Back to School Party every year. This year, our party was at Splish and Splash and I got to make the cakes! :)

I hope the teachers in my family and my teacher friends don't find this offensive! I know regular schoolers have a lot of fun too! :) But since it was specifically for our homeschool group I had to do something fun just for them. :)

They were delicious and the kids had a blast swimming with their friends one last time before the 'new year' started up!

Hey Mom and Dad...Look What I Made!

From the title you probably assume it's about something the kids made. But nope! I'm actually excited about something I made with crayons this time, LOL! I saw this idea on my new favorite website...Pinterest.com (it's truly addicting!) It is an endless treasury of all things crafty and creative...a little bit of heaven for me.  :) Anyway, I saw an idea like this on the site that was a smaller version that someone had made for teacher gifts, but I thought it would be a really cute addition to our wall in our schooling area. So I made a giant 'A'...for Adams of course and I think it turned out pretty cute!

All I did was take the glass out of the 17" x 17" frame and cut the crayons with scissors, then glued them  in an 'A' shape with tacky glue. I laid them all out first before I glued them down so I knew about where everything would go.  :) Anyway, it was fun so I had to share!

Here's a little closer shot of the crayons, you can see that they didn't all break even and I'm sure if you were going to make this and had much more patience than I have then you could get them all a little straighter and more even, but I was happy just to finish the thing and have them not all fall off after I hung it on the wall! :)

The Last Few Weeks of Summer in S.Korea

BEWARE! It's a LONG one....lots of pictures! I wanted to start putting posts up about our new school year, but I decided I'd better not do that until I wrapped up summer. I didn't post much this summer because we were too busy having fun, as Adams' always do! :) But there were a few pics and fun times that were too cute not to share, at least for the Grandparents if no one else! 

We went out to one of our favorite places here in S.Korea, the Art Park at Pyeongtaek Lake. The kids had a great time running on the little bit of beach that's there and playing hide and seek in the bushes and trees...

We went on the swan paddle boats, though I didn't get a picture of all of us in it since inside the boat it just looks like a blue box all around you! But from the outside they look neat, so I took a picture of some other people out in the boats. :)

Afterwards we got slushies. :) It was a HOT day!

I LOVE the precious 'brother - sister love' in these pics.  :)

Faithy enjoyed her slushie... especially the fact that it made her tongue a little purple. 

Peter took this picture and it made me laugh because I totally feel like a pack horse sometimes when we go places, especially when we're out and about on a hot day and I'm carrying all the water for everyone! So here's a picture of our family in water bottles...

Another day we took some new friends to a different park in Asan. I had to share these cute ones of Samuel and his sweet friend Alivia...too cute!

Samuel snuggling his handsome Daddy.  :)

It was really warm that day and Samuel kept wanting to play in the stream water...

My friend Carrie took a sweet Mama & kids picture of us too. So there was one of me...just not of my face! LOL!

With all those cute kiddos together in one place we had to take a group shot of course...well, minus the Mom's...cause the Mom's are always taking the pictures.  :)

It was a fun day with some new friends.  :)

(I made the girls' skirts! Didn't they turn out cute?!)  :)

We did a LOT of swimming this summer and the kids have turned into quite the little fishes and LOVE to swim n the big pool even though we have several shallow pools at Splish and Splash to choose from. 

I didn't take many pictures of everyone swimming though because most of the time I took the kids by myself to the pool while Peter was at work and wrangling the 4 of them AND the camera around the pool was just a bit much for me.  :) 

Joy loves swimming underwater, but the poor girl does it one handed because she has to plug her nose! LOL! Just like her Mama. :) We'll have to work on that one at the indoor pool in the off season while Splish and Splash is closed until next summer.

This is not a good picture, I think it was taken by accident, but you get the idea of how comfortable the kids are around water now.... Joshua is flying off into the DEEP end! The kids, and Peter of course think it's hilarious that Mama can't touch in the deep end of the pool so I'm treading water just as much as the kids when I'm in. :)

My sleepy Samuel, so tired from swimming and playing in the sun...

Peter was happy to get to play his bass a little extra this summer when our Chapel had a worship BBQ in the park where the band played and he got to be a part of it. The kids all loved watching Daddy sing and play while they danced and ate with their friends. :)

Except for the fact that we didn't get home to the States at all, it was a pretty good summer for us here in S. Korea.  :)  

Samuel Sings His ABC's

My baby is growing up too fast!